Back in the late 90’s I was a Senior Product Manager at Prodigy, tasked with bringing a rather new concept called “instant messaging” to market. I worked alongside a talented Prodigy Engineer who created a novel software that enabled a great end user digital communication experience. It was an exciting time as the concept of instant messaging was no longer for geeks, rather it entered the mainstream as a viable digital communication alternative to email. A good analogy today is the growing popularity of text messaging.
Looking back, it was truly a great experience for me working alongside smart technologists, outside research agencies, and a bunch of savvy marketers.
During that time I spent a lot of time investigating the metrics associated with the instant messaging, or rather, digital communications market. Aside from AOL’s instant messaging product, there was a significant player in the market called ICQ. ICQ was an Israeli company that had recently been acquired by AOL. It was hot. Its technology was advanced and it had a large and growing global user base. It seemed AOL acquired ICQ to build upon its success in the growing instant messaging marketplace.
Unfortunately, AOL did little with the company. Now, with AOL’s separation from Time Warner, and its strategic focus on content development and distribution, ICQ is on the block to be sold. ICQ is the No. 1 instant messaging service in Israel, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and other small countries with 40 to 50 million unique monthly visitors. In the US, ICQ lags behind bigger rival services from AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google (GOOG). In addition, Facebook and Twitter have also become major players in the status-update space. AOL is looking for $300 million for the moderately profitable company that employs roughly 100 in Israel.
Jeff Bezos, you might want to take a look at purchasing ICQ as I believe Amazon.com is a good fit to capitalize on the next phase of agent technologies, something I call “push shopping 2.0.”
The concept of intelligent software agent technologies has been around for a long time, with limited mainstream strategic deployment. An oversimplified explanation of agent technologies goes something like this… Software that monitors multiple activities in multiple places, and makes automatic suggestions based upon predefined or learned criteria. A current-day example of an agent technology is Amazon.com’s recommendation engine, a software tool that suggests products Amazon.com offers consumers based upon historical purchase behavior.
I’ve always been a big fan of agent technologies, especially with the successful learnings to date and potential future commercial implications. The challenge has typically been compiling the necessary components to deploy a comprehensive solution. That is where a marriage of Amazon and ICQ makes sense. Below are the components:
- Knowing who is online and when they are actively communicating with others – ICQ
- Having a trusted brand for consumers to interact with – Amazon
- Capability to instantly communicate with customers at an appropriate time – ICQ
- Gobs and gobs of historical transaction data with extremely valuable customer purchase insights – Amazon
- Performance metrics associated with current version 1.0 agent technologies (Amazon’s recommendation engine) – Amazon
- Credit card (or ACH, etc.) billing information on file – Amazon
- Ownership interests or deep relationships with a plethora of online merchants – Amazon
- One-click purchase solution – Amazon
- Significant web and mobile distribution – Amazon
- Significant global client-based software distribution – ICQ
An example of my vision for push shopping 2.0 goes something like this:
- Company knows consumer enjoys going to Bruce Springsteen concerts as every time Bruce plays in NY the consumer purchases front row tickets via Ticketmaster
- Company knows Bruce is coming to town as Ticketmaster just released the updated schedule
- Company knows the consumer’s billing information and one-click purchase is enabled
- Company know consumer typically purchases four tickets from Ticketmaster
- Company knows the consumer is online via their activity on instant messaging
- Company engages the consumer at the right time on instant messaging with a message “Hey, Bruce Springsteen is playing at Madison Square Garden on x date. Click here to instantly purchase 4 front row tickets to your credit card on file with Company, and get a 15% off discount. Act now as the tickets are expected to sell out within the hour.”
If we can collectively resolve the outstanding privacy issues, this makes for an interesting ecommerce opportunity.
What do you think?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I love your thinking, it all makes sense…but does Amazon have to buy ICQ to take advantage?
Simple answer is no, but that is the same answer for any large capital rich company (Google, Microsoft, etc.) that is thinking about a competing in someone’s sandbox.
There are a handful of instant messaging players out there with sizable installed bases. Couple that with the growth of the 140 character status update market… consumers are social (I know you know that) and crave instant communications.
I believe Amazon needs an existing footprint to accelerate a market position there.
Feel free to tell Jeff Bezos I am available for his call.
I hope you are well – Joe